It’s Larmer Tree time again! I’m not a big festival-goer but I occasionally make an exception for this one, depending on who’s on the comedy bill.
I first went to the Larmer Tree Festival in 2015. It’s pretty local and it had a great comedy lineup so I went over after work just for the evening. I know it’s a nice festival, very middle class, very family-friendly, very hipster but it was the first music festival I’d ever been to, so I didn’t have a clue what to expect. I bought a flower crown because I was very underdressed, I ate a cheese toastie on the top deck of a bestrewn vintage bus and I saw Bellowhead on the main stage. Having been put off live music for life by teenage years right up by the speakers at the likes of the Smash Hits tour, I was surprised to find I do like live music, especially if I can watch it from a quiet patch at the back.
So this year I went back.
Just for the day. I’m still not big into festivals or live music and I can literally spend two weekends in Malta for the entrance price alone, which is fine if that’s your thing. It’s just not mine.
I chose Friday for the comedy lineup. The comedy is supposed to be a fun bonus extra, it’s not supposed to be your reason for going. I like comedy a lot more than I like music and I really like Laura Lexx who was compering. I also like all three of the others: Jessica Fostekew, Stuart Goldsmith and Josie Long.
I don’t work Fridays so I messed around getting ready and headed off at lunchtime. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks. I’d camp! Camping is included in a day ticket so you can spend all your money on their booze and not have to worry about driving. Oh, it would be nice to camp at such a nice festival! And then I got up on Friday and it was raining. No, I’m not camping in the rain, not when it’s not a camping trip. It’ll take a week to dry the tent and a month to repack it. No, not fun.
I got my wristband, green as per all things Friday. Went into the big field. One end is lined with food, the other with traders dotted with huge performance tents and there’s a double row of traders down the middle. I love wandering around here. Clothes with rainbows and sequins and patches and fabrics you don’t see outside festivals. Silver and amber and turquoise and string jewellery. Incense. Conservation agencies trying half-heartedly to sign you up. Henna and hair wraps and glitter tattoos. Disco wings for kids – I swear, there wasn’t a girl under ten on the entire site not wearing a pair of these mad things. I bought a mermaid-sequin bomber-style jacket, after spending at least six hours returning regularly to the tent to stroke it and tell myself I couldn’t have it. But I’ve been after something like that for so long and it was a fraction of the price of anything I’ve seen in the last two years! (Yeah, why? Dunno, but I sat down on Saturday to see the left cuff back together…)
On the other side of the main path is the actual Larmer Tree Gardens. There’s a clearing just inside where the main stage lives, plus some smaller stages around the outside that I bet just love the competition 20 metres away. Then you can head into a labyrinth of paths, avenues and tracks.
I stumbled on the…wellness village? Miniature labyrinth of tents offering every kind of massage and spirituality and relaxing and mindfulness treatment you can imagine, all at extra cost. Bit off-putting to see the proprietors of these little health establishments standing outside their tent, leaning on trees and smoking. There are also hot tubs – expensive and booked in advance and so so appealing in the rain.
Then there’s Lostwoods. This is more a weird art exhibition. First there’s a six-foot wire hare sculpture onto which you can tie a rag with your wish written on it. Very nice, very cute. Then there are three mouldering pianos just sitting in the woods. Then a collection of bongos and carved logs as scrapy-tappy instruments. And then there’s an assortment of instruments just hanging from the trees; some usable, some not. Ukuleles, violins, trumpets, a French horn, saxophone, guitars. And yes, everyone had a go at the brass instruments.
Further on there’s a tree hung with lampshades and fairy lights, sheltering a mouldering dining table and chairs and a green velvet sofa you couldn’t pay me to sit on. And opposite was the fire pit – a hanging tray surrounded by logs and benches plus a few hay bales protected from the rain by a sail-shaped tarpaulin. That little lot was cute and functional. I spent a long time sheltering on those hay bales and when they lot the fire it was a delight.
I’m probably missing part of Lostwoods. Oh, it’s all lit under the trees by bright coloured lights. It makes the woods look pretty but it’s at just the right angle to totally blind me when it starts getting dark.
Behind the lampshade tree is the shortcut to the Wilds. It’s a narrow little path through the trees, decorated with skulls – sheep, I presume – painted in Day of the Dead style with UV-reactive paint, plus there are laser projectors of the kind usually seen lighting up the front of houses in December. That and the UV lamps and a few strings of rope lights and another few ground-level coloured lights make it fun and interesting and also totally lethal to walk through, especially as it’s one-way width but open to two-way traffic. And it’s the one place in the entire festival I found that was muddy.
When you get into the Wilds, it’s more open than Lostwoods. More wild. This is where a lot of the crafts and workshops are hiding, plus a rum cocktail van that could be doing much better business in the food/shopping field. This feels less “what on earth is going to round the next bend?” and more “what else is hiding in the trees and where?”
By 4pm, I was damp and nearly chilly and bored. I’d seen all the things. The music hadn’t really got started and the comedy didn’t begin until quarter to eleven at night. I couldn’t entertain myself in a field in the rain for another nearly seven hours. So I went home.
I dried my trousers, had a bath, had some solid non-festival food, found my waterproof mountain boots instead of my sandals (feet dry quicker than shoes but not if it never stops being wet) and went back about 8.30.
Ah, this was better! The place had some life now! The campfire had been lit, the sky was starting to think about fading, people were out enjoying themselves. Yes, this was what I’d liked four years ago. And although it was grey and nearly-foggy, it wasn’t raining!
I wandered around again, seeing it all differently now. Pretty. Weird. Hipstery. Nice. Lights glowing properly as it tried to get dark. I went along to the main stage to watch Cat Empire, as recommended at work. Found myself a spot at the side where I found see most of it from a groundsheet without getting my hands trodden on. I liked one or two songs but they’re a bit jazz for my taste and I don’t like jazz. I can live with swing, just about, but I don’t do jazz.
And then I went to the Peacock Palace, the big day-acts marquee. Chairs aren’t allowed. I’d sheltered from the rain in there during the afternoon and now I found a spot where I could sit on my groundsheet and still see the stage; a stage built for music, not comedy. Until that moment, I didn’t know there could be a difference.
Once I was settled, staff started bringing in wobbly benches. I’ve only watched comedy from the ground once before and I can’t really say I’m sorry – I was guaranteed to get pins and needles in my feet before Laura finished introducing herself.
The first three acts were great, although audience members spoken to invariably panicked and failed to remember their own names. But then at five to midnight, Josie Long came on. I like Josie Long. But I haven’t been up at midnight for years and she had an hour-long slot and I spent most of it wishing she’d just finish. I didn’t want to walk out. One, that’s rude. Two, it wasn’t possible when there were so many people squashed into the open sides of the tent. Three, I like Josie and wanted to hear it all. I just wished there was a lot less of it to hear. Don’t think I was the only one. This show went on for more than two hours with no interval. I was at a similar show – not at a music festival! – in May and there was an interval after every act. There almost always is. And after a lot of beer, many audiants wanted a short break.
So it finished at five to one in the morning. I’d been expecting to be home by 11.30, midnight at the latest and there I was at getting on for quarter to two. Good thing it would be Saturday when I woke up.